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To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (62659)	6/15/1999 1:42:00 PM
From: 16yearcycle	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

Re: Msft and vc This is interesting. It appears they sort of apply the same philosophy to their investing as they do to expanding the scope of their business. When a market has already developed, they move in and try to take the category, and it is HARD, but they get there. When a business develops, they buy a piece of it, but not before it has become a factor in it's business category. They don't like to be early, in either case. I have the net again at work. What a relief!

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (62659)	6/15/1999 2:09:00 PM
From: Rob S.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

I think that there is a lot of what can be looked at as unethical or illegal activity that goes on in the "real business world". The problem is that this activity has grown to become accepted as common business practice. Take for instance the semiconductor and electronics industry. If vendor 'Ix' has some proprietary parts that are important or necessary to the competitive design of a customer's PC or communications system and vendor 'Ix' also wants to sell the customer other components that are more generic. Vendor "Ix" may press the customer to negotiate a blanket supply agreement that includes a mix of the proprietary parts and the generic ones. Vendor 'Ix' thus locks up a larger order. The vendor never explicitly says, "If you don't bo along with this you will get put on our 'B' list for advance product information and parts available" - but that is what is implied. The customer has likely heard about experiences in which their competitors have gotten out of favor with the primary supplier of a part and then ran into shortages or it caused them to be late to enter the market for a new generation of products. This sort of 'bundling' goes on but I have never seen it written down as a policy statement or even explicitly in a memo. I have negotiated contracts and have been party to decisions in which we told the customer "We are going to quote your requirements as a blanket . . . no we can't accept only part of the bid because we have structured the pricing on the bulk of the business (or some other rational)." That degree of leverage is unusual but not that unusual.